Florence court finds pair guilty for a second time of killing British student
in Perugia in 2007

Amanda Knox has been convicted of Meredith Kercher’s murder for a second time, having said that if she was found guilty: “They’ll have to catch me and pull me back kicking and screaming into a prison.”

Knox, 26, and her Italian former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito had their guilty verdicts for the 2007 murder of the British student reinstated by an appeal court in Florence.

Shortly after the verdict was announced, Knox, who returned to America after she was cleared in 2011, left her mother’s home in Seattle with her head covered in a blanket and was driven away. Asked how she was, her mother, Edda Mellas, said: “She’s upset, obviously.”

“Having been found innocent before, I expected better from the Italian justice system.

“My family and I have suffered greatly from this wrongful persecution.”

Knox added that the verdict was “no consolation for the Kercher family” and said: “This has gotten out of hand.”

She blamed her conviction on an “overzealous and intransigent prosecution, prejudiced and narrow-minded investigation, unwillingness to admit mistakes, reliance on unreliable testimony and evidence, character assassination, inconsistent and unfounded accusatory theory.”

Her lawyer, Luciano Ghirga, said: “We have not lost our courage. We respect this judgment. We will appeal.”

Speaking in the days leading up to the verdict, Knox told the BBC’s Newsnight that in such a situation she hoped the US government would refuse to extradite her.

She said: “I’m definitely not going back to Italy willingly. They’ll have to catch me and pull me back kicking and screaming into a prison that I don’t deserve to be in. I will fight for my innocence.”

Asked how she would feel if Sollecito was imprisoned while she remained free, she said: “That would drive me crazy. I don’t know what I could do, but I’d do it. There would be action. And there would be an outcry.”

Kercher’s mother said she did not feel any relief as the latest verdict was announced. Arline Kercher was at home in Coulsdon, Surrey, watching the developments in Florence on television. Her other daughter Stephanie and son Lyle were in the crowded court room to hear the verdict.

Her voice quivering with emotion, Mrs Kercher said: “I really don’t want to talk right now. I am still taking it all in.”

Asked if she felt relieved, Mrs Kercher, who has been waiting for five years to find out what really happened to her daughter replied: “No. Not really.”

Lyle Kercher said: “It’s hard to feel anything at the moment because we knew it’s going to go to a further appeal by the defendants. Whatever the verdict, it was never going to be a case of celebrating.”

The next stage of the appeal process, to Italy’s highest court, could drag on until spring next year. Patrick Lumumba, the barman who was wrongly implicated in the crime said: “I was convinced they would be found guilty.

I have always maintained they were guilty. Amanda knows what happened and she bears great responsibility.”

Francesco Maresca, the lawyer for the Kercher family, welcomed the guilty verdict. “I feel great satisfaction,” he told The Daily Telegraph. “It confirmed everything that has been said by the prosecution in these past few years. I hope it delivers justice to the Kercher family.”

A jury, guided by two judges, reinstated the guilty verdicts that were originally handed down in 2009 but overturned two years later on appeal.

The verdict, following a four-month retrial, effectively means that Knox, who refused to return to Italy for the latest case, will not be able to leave the United States for fear of extradition.

Sollecito was in Florence for the verdict, but refused to attend court after claiming to be “too stressed” by the media attention.

The verdict was the latest twist in a tortuous legal process that has attracted enormous attention on both sides of the Atlantic. Miss Kercher, 21, a Leeds University student who was at the start of a year’s study abroad in Perugia in Umbria, was found stabbed to death on the morning of Nov 1, 2007, in the house she shared with Miss Knox and two Italian women.

Prosecutors claimed in the original trial that she died as a result of a sex game organised by Miss Knox, Mr Sollecito and Rudy Guede, a small-time drug dealer who was born in Ivory Coast but grew up in Perugia.

In the latest trial in Florence, the prosecution changed tack, saying that the murder was a result of simmering tensions between Miss Knox and her British housemate over cleaning and standards of hygiene.

Guede was convicted of murder and sexual assault in a separate trial and is now serving a 16-year prison sentence.